Tertullian's Traducianism

Tertullian held to a “traducianist” theory of the soul’s origin, believing the soul to be inherited (some have supposed this to mean the soul is material rather than spiritual), and that both the soul and the body are reproduced in the moment of conception. In this way the first parents literally set the conditions for all their progeny.

Adam’s material is passed on to all posterity (the entire race), and all that we are was previously in Adam. Augustine appreciated the work of Tertullian though he apparently saw a conflict between his belief in the immateriality of the soul and the supposedly materialistic view of Tertullian. Augustine's view that body and soul alike, both irreducible to a common material, were inheritors of sin, made him unable to reconcile himself with the traducianist thesis. I actually see no necessary conflict there.

It seems that Augustine held to a view of the sexual transmission of sin very much like Tertullian’s, while both rejecting the theoretical scaffolding Tertullian’s view was built upon, and without proposing an alternative theory of the soul’s origin.